“Explore American culture and society where the United States, Asia, and the Pacific meet. Study the American future now.”

American Studies Program, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa

The Hawaiian Islands are justly famed for their great natural beauty and the generosity of the native people. Less well known is the tragic history of those people in the wake of European contact and American conquest. It is a history that continues today. During the course of more than thirty years, from the late 1960s and into the early the 21st century, Ed Greevy took thousands of photographs of the Hawaiian people and other ethnic communities in the islands as they struggled to resist the seizure of land, evictions, and further marginalization and impoverishment. With gratitude for granting us permission, we offer a number of Greevy photographs throughout the website as a counterpoint and corrective to the celebratory images for which Hawai‘i is better known. For a much larger selection of Greevy’s work, see Ed Greevy and Haunani-Kay Trask, Ku‘e: Thirty Years of Land Struggle in Hawai‘i (Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 2004).

To view specific images used on this website by Ed Greevy and other artists, please visit the Artists’ Credits page.

"I came to American Studies with backgrounds in art, literature, and folkore. The program at UH allowed me to combine my interests in social sciences and humanities and within global contexts. My explorations in Hawaiian and Asian histories, ethnography, tourism, and the politics of representation led to my current career in museums, where an interdisciplinary education is a necessity."